JHANG, Pakistan (Reuters) - Sunni Muslims went on the rampage on Tuesday after the murder of Pakistani militant leader Azam Tariq, and tens of thousands flocked to his burial vowing revenge and shouting slogans against minority Shi'ites.

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The bearded firebrand, who was a member of parliament, was gunned down along with his driver and three bodyguards while entering the capital Islamabad on Monday.

<snip>

RAMPAGING CROWD

Earlier, police fired in the air to disperse a rampaging crowd of about 300 people who torched a filling station in Jhang. Protesters there also set fire to tires and pelted military vehicles with stones.

In the normally sleepy capital Islamabad, sympathizers torched a cinema and smashed cars and traffic signals. Doctor Salman Adil told Reuters one cinema victim was dead on arrival at the Federal Government Services hospital.

So is W going to hit another trifecta, total meltdowns in Iraq, Israel/ME, and Afghanistan/Pakistan?

in Pakistan there's something of a civil war in Sindh and to a lesser extent in some of the other provinces, particulary between some among the Shia minority (some 20mil among the 150mil population) and anti-Shia groups. This guy--deobandi Maulana Azam Tariq and his organization Sipah-e-Sahaba--was right at the centre of it and with his death, his supporters are more pissed off than usual now.

And since Pakistan is a supposed ally and front on the war against terra, what happens does have an impact on US Troops and especially since al Qaeda and elements within Pakistan are involved in a lot of the unrest in that region.

"BFEE" may be evil fucks, but they're not Supermen--believe it or not, something can happen on its own without their direction.

Technically it goes back to Kissinger and Brezhinski(sp?), for people like Azam Tariq and leaders who came before him, the Maulana Jhangvi for example, got their start with the dictator put in place by the US/CIA-backed militaray right before the Afghan/Soviet war. Kissinger had the elected president killed after he refused to stop Pakistan's nuclear program, the military took over again after that.

The anti-Shia stuff that this is tied to (practically Azam Tariq's raison d'etre and almost certainly what got his ass shot) basically originated from the victory of the Islamic Republicans in the Iranian revolution, it was feared in Pakistan that their US-backed dictator would be next to fall so something had to be "done" about them. Hence groups like Sipah e-Sahaba (headed by the dead man these riots are over) & Lashkar Jhangvi running around with their "Shia Kafir" slogans. Of course, the opportunistic gamble forming these groups previously is now a burden to the State (again under a US-backed military dictator, funny how those things work) as they're not exactly useful in the same sense or remotely under control anymore--but that's something that statist bureaucrats never consider when they think they've got a real brilliant idea to try out.

To be fair, the US presence and FBI domination in certain sectors is taking it all up a few volumns and making existing situations far more heated, but credit for these things must also be directed elsewhere.

If the CIA has tried to play the Mojahir civil unrest off to the administration's benefit to gain some inside leverage in Pakistan...undoubtedly that option has been explored, but the extent to which it may have been successfully exercised will probably remain hidden for a while.

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